


Round and Round

by Zafaria



Category: Wizard101
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 08:16:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18890713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zafaria/pseuds/Zafaria
Summary: Everything is the same. Everything is the same and it sucks.





	Round and Round

 

 

**Round and Round**

 

I remember, I started making the gear spinner yesterday, or, maybe it was a week ago. Maybe longer. I don't know. Haley says she knows, and that it was two weeks that I've been working on a mechanical spider. She tells me that Nora can back her on this, although I am doubtful, and Nora just continues tightening the bolts on a metal box in her corner desk. Nora has also been working for a while, for how long, I also don't know.

"You don't know much, do you?" Haley pokes. She leans over the desk where I scribble something new on the schematics. The pen makes a squealing sound as it moves over the blue-washed grid.

"I know enough. I know enough to work on my project and stay out of people's hair and create things decent enough for this class." I write another hurried line in the corner with an arrow pointing to a long stretch of a spring on the spider's leg. 

"That's the thing," she says, "you haven't created anything. In fact, I don't know anyone in this class who has. We've all been working on our projects, the same projects, forever it seems."

I look up at her copper eyes. She is sitting up in her chair, leaning over the back and spilling onto my desk, using her elbows at a perfect angle to hold her head up to mine. Her expression is lackluster and unimpressed.

"I'm working on it. It'll be done soon, I think," I say. She looks at me one last time, then back to the bulbous body of the spider golem on my desk. Then, she turns away and faces the front, tapping her pencil as she looks over her drawings.

After my conversation with Haley, I grasp around the edges of my desk looking for my wrench. When I can't find it, I peel back my blueprints to look under the clutter of pages. When I still can't find it, I lean over in my seat, the chair squealing and my long arm reaching down. Shuffling my hat and bag, I then lift my feet, notice nothing different, and stamp them back down on the floor. Still, nothing. 

"Something wrong?" Professor Balestrom calls out over the classroom in a bubbly, spry voice. His voice bounces every other syllable, and he is happy and charged to be running such a productive classroom. The rest of the class looks to the singing professor, then pivots to look at my seat in the center, the origin of the ruckus.

"Uh, no. Not really, just missing a wrench."

"What size?" He reaches around behind him and produces a bag from somewhere under his desk. He begins plucking tools out of the bag as he awaits my answer.

"If you have a two-inch, please."

He pulls out a few more wrenches, and they clank as he lays them in a pile on the desk. One of the large-head ones he looks at a moment, before picking it up and approaching me. I lean down to collect the tool.

"Thank you," I say.

"Be more careful. I only have so many," he tells me. I think about it. This isn't the first wrench I lost. And I certainly am not the only one who misplaces their tools sometimes. 

"This one is a titanium alloy, too," he continues. "It is durable, will work on any bolt. And you can leave it out in the rain and it won't rust!" He practically jumps as he says this last bit. He grabs the brim of his hat before bouncing off back to the front of the room and assuming his position standing in front of the desk. I can't quite recall who else in the class may have laid down a screwdriver or a hammer in the midst of their tinkering only to find it gone, but I know there are others. Yet, Balestrom seems always able to produce the exact tools from his little tool pouch, every week, no matter how many copies of a two-inch wrench have gone missing in the weeks before. There is always one stashed away with him.

I look around at deft hands fastening bolts and the etching sounds of slowed machinations of our automatons. Some people have the motors on their pieces working already, albeit, the rates are wrong and experimental; everything moves slow in this phase. Everything has been moving slow for a while. I have not even completed attaching one leg to the body of my spider. The glint of the other students’ tools catch my eye, and I see they have the same titanium-alloy tools the Professor just boasted to me about. I wonder how long they have had them, and how long I didn't notice them for. I have been using stainless steel wrenches before, and am only now getting caught up.

I look back down to the golem cradled in my arms, tightening the bolt until I can feel it grind into the metal sheets below, the strain on the plate causing it to give a little. I reverse and loosen it a hair. I pick up my pen and go to write another note on the blueprints. This is the first note on the blueprints for the spider golem, and yet I am certain I left at least a couple of half-scribbled ideas in the corner for later. The corners are clean, and I chew my cheek as I write my next note. I try very hard to remember that I wrote that note, but I know that by tomorrow it'll become a fog in my mind and fall into the same memory of small whining sounds and squeaks and groans with everybody's head bent over their creations and Balestrom looking pleasantly over the room. Haley is tapping her pencil fervently on the desk, and I await her turning around and talking about the projects in class again. I refocus on my golem and begin to tighten the bolt holding the leg to the body. It squeals. The bolt grinds on the metal plate, and I can feel the plate warping inward slightly towards the bolt. I move my wrist the opposite direction and loosen the bolt. I drop the wrench from my right hand and go to write a note on the blueprints to address the warping in the plate at the bolt. This is the first note about this project that I am jotting down on the blueprints. I look back on my desk for my wrench, to find that it is gone.

 


End file.
